What It Means If You Find An Egg Inside Another Egg, According To Reddit

Chickens are fascinating creatures. One minute they're adorable little puffballs who chirp when you hold them, and the next they're two-legged giants lumbering and squawking at the crack of dawn. But America loves them — and not just fried chicken. Interest in backyard chickens, or those raised in a urban or suburban space, has remained high since increasing during the pandemic (via AARP). Since grocery prices don't seem to be decreasing anytime soon, these feathery pets are a good source of eggs, meat, or plain old companionship.

When you're collecting all those freshly laid eggs from your two-legged friends, you have to pay a bit more attention to them than you would your average carton of supermarket eggs. If your chickens are laying eggs that have a "rubbery" shell then they may have a calcium deficiency (via Poultry Keeper). You must take good care of your chickens to ensure that they can be the best producers they can be.

There are times when chickens lay eggs that have "surprises" in them, hidden behind the shell. This was the experience one woman had when she cut open her hard-boiled egg to find a second, tinier egg inside. How could this have happened?

Confused about this odd, marble-sized "baby" egg, the sibling of the woman posted the image to the subreddit r/mildlyinteresting to get some answers. While some users made jokes involving a certain quote from the film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," one user explained that it was a natural occurrence.

"This happens sometimes, usually toward the beginning or end of a hen's laying days," the user wrote. "This can be somewhere between a full egg that gets double shelled to a tiny egg that forms inside another egg," they continued, saying that the tiny egg forms first and the larger egg grows around it. 

A chicken laying an egg with another egg inside of it is rare, but it has been known to happen. CBC gives an example of a hen in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, who laid an egg far larger than normal. When her owner cracked the egg open, expecting a "triple-yolker," she instead found that there was a whole egg inside. "Egg within eggs" are caused by a process known as counter-peristalsis contraction, in which an egg gets stuck in a hen's oviduct and a second egg begins to form around it (via Backyard Poultry). 

While there have been no known reports of a triple egg as of now, as we said before, chickens are fascinating creatures, so you never know.